


Free

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7252222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael's reflections on freedom (post 2x22).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free

   


  
_I've slammed the doors  
_ _I've jammed the locks  
_ _I've laid the bricks  
_ _I've built the walls  
_ _No one could tell me back then  
_ _Why joy eluded me  
_ _Kept bumping into that misery  
_ _Locked up deep down inside of me_   
~from ‘Free’ by Faith Hill

 

In Prison, the things you miss most are the things those who aren’t in Prison take for granted everyday. Getting up to go to the fridge for a soda, going out to check the mail, sleeping as long as you like without worrying that someone will wake you up very jarringly.

Linc and I talked about those things when we first got out, when we first got a place where we were safe. We talked about how we’d never take those little things for granted ever again. It’s a privilege now when someone asks, “Hey, can you get me one, since you’re up?” Sometimes we’ve even raced each other for the fridge door to get Sara or Jane something to drink. Once he actually body slammed me to the floor to get LJ a Popsicle. It was pretty funny.

But something else happened to us when we achieved freedom. There’s free, and then there’s _free_. Sometimes the word repeats on an endless loop in my head until it starts to sound like the wrong word. But it’s the right word. It’s the difference inside my brother and me. How we were before Fox River, and how we are after. Maybe it was Fox River that actually created the divide, but I think it was the culmination of a bunch of other things, inside and outside the prison walls.

The first thing for me is obviously Sara Tancredi. Despite all the harm that came to her and the losses she suffered, her first gift to me—leaving the door unlocked—was the first step to my real freedom. Free in my mind to love a woman who loved me back, who loved me even after I did things that should cause her not to love me. I’d never had that before, and maybe that was because I hadn’t tried to have it before, or didn’t know I could have it before, or I simply wouldn’t let anyone’s actions have meaning like hers did. There was no way to guard my heart against what she’s done for me, and in accepting those actions, I accepted her ultimate gift of love. And her love has made me free.

For Linc, Sara’s kindness was far-reaching too. He’s not unnoticing of that, and treats her with a deferential gentleness I’ve only ever seen him show one other person in my life. Of course, he could never treat Jane like that. See, he learned the body slam from her. If he was overly gentle with her, she’d kick his ass, just to teach him a lesson. His appreciation of Sara, however, reminds me of how he treated our mother when she was sick and dying. She’s allowed him to be that again without weakness or loss; merely accepting his care of her has made it okay for him to feel that way about someone again, protective and loving in an infinitely familial way. 

Because we barely escaped death I don’t know how many times between Fox River and _Sona_ and what ended up being our final destination in the more eastern part of Panama, Lincoln and I forego any pretense at nonchalance with each other. We hug whenever we see each other, which is often since we live in neighboring houses on a dusty street. We are affectionate with our wives, and they are _our wives_ , women we married just as soon as we knew we didn’t want to be without them ever again, which for me and Sara was about five minutes after we decided we’d stay in Ailigandi permanently. Linc and Jane waited about seven months, but after she turned up pregnant, it wasn’t that hard for Lincoln to admit he’d had a ring in his pocket for almost two months. It wasn’t because he wasn’t sure, but he still isn’t quick to demand anything of Jane, because like I mentioned, she can take him down with one arm tied behind her back, even while suffering from morning sickness.

LJ is as brown as an Indian and smiles all day long. He was always a mostly happy child, but as he comes of age in a Spanish-speaking country, I realize he’s the most adaptable of us all. He knows the language well enough to understand everything said to him, and he can communicate better and better each day. He runs our dive shop with confidence and ease, and usually knows more about what’s going on than either Linc or I care to, so we let him have free reign.

What’s most illuminating about the word free when it circulates through my brain these days is the fact that our freedom came from our father. Other than our actual conceptions, neither of us ever felt particularly grateful to that man, and it’s a burdensome thing, hate and grudge-holding. Letting those emotions fly away with all the other things we thought mattered freed us for all the other joys life might have offered us sooner if we’d been capable of taking them. As it was, we weren’t. But now we are, and that’s the freest free we have.

Now, I dig all eight toes down into the sand and watch as Sara carries our son out into the shallow waves. He slaps at the water playfully, little Frankie, because he loves the water, and the ocean is just a giant bathtub for him. When he slaps too hard and the water catches Jane in the face, both women laugh and move away from each other just a few feet.

“Look at that woman, would you?” Linc says, nudging my leg with his bare foot. “When she turns around you can’t even tell she’s carrying my kid. And she thinks she’s as big as a house.”

Just then, Jane disappears under the water for a moment, her six-months-pregnant belly popping back up as she turns on to her back to float next to Sara and Frankie. I just murmur my agreement to my brother.

“But you know what else I think every time I look at her from behind?” Linc asks, a smile in his words.

“How great her ass looks?” I supply.

“You got it, bro. Man, did I get myself a hottie or what?” he says, chuckling happily.

“You did all right,” I say, glancing at him. He winks at me before lowering his sunglasses back over his eyes and lying back against the lounge chair.

“You did too,” he replies, as though Sara might hear him and think he’s slighting her.

“I know,” I respond, turning my eyes back to the water. Sara lifts a little baby hand in her own to wave at me and I see her mouth move, forming the words, “Wave to Daddy.”

Free to wave back at her, I lift my arm. When my son’s face lights up in a smile of recognition, even from twenty feet away, I choke on sudden tears.

But now, even tears are a symptom of our freedom, so I embrace them too. “Yep, he’s gonna be as smart as you were,” Linc’s voice rumbles next to me, and I realize he’s seen the whole exchange.

“Were?” I ask, looking back at my big brother.

“Well, you don’t have to use your giant brain as much as you used to, so yeah, _were_.”

“That’s all right,” I say a moment later. “I like not having to think so much.”

Lincoln sighs and a smile touches his mouth. “Yeah,” he says in agreement, and I know what he’s thinking as we lay out under the dazzling Panamanian sun. We’re free from that too.

We’re free.

  



End file.
